Protein synthesis inhibitor reduces late-phase long-term potentiation in hippocampus

Cool study by Je et al, using genetically engineered specific inhibition of eIF2 – alpha mediated protein synthesis to study the role of de novo protein synthesis in neurons. Late-phase long-term potentiation (L-LTP) in  hippocampal slices was shown in 1988 to be dependent upon protein synthesis by general protein inhibition, but it has remained unclear [...]

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Characterizing neural development based on single neuron analysis

Yu et al recently reported their use of twin-spot mosaic analysis with repressible cell markers to track the development of clusters of neurons in Drosophila. This is an exciting avenue of research because development is so tightly linked to cell phenotype, and classifying all brain cell types is a major goal of neuroscience. Aside from [...]

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Evolution of peripheral myelin protein 22

The evolution of the protein structure of myelination in jawed vertebrates is fascinating in part because certain vertebrates (i.e., goldfish and zebrafish) have the capability to regenerate myelin. If we could figure out the protein changes underlying this divergence, we could perhaps express genes promoting the expression of these critical proteins in humans and replicate [...]

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Characterizing the properties of epilepsy

The neurologist Dr. Lowenstein reviews some of the characteristics, effects, and current treatments in his fascinating lecture, which you can find here. Here are some of my notes:

Epilepsy has been observed in humans for 5000 years, and Hippocrates wrote of epilepsy as the “sacred disease.”
The first big step in epilepsy research was the invention of [...]

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Carbon nanotubes as an interface for retinal implants

Shoval et al recently tested the efficacy of TiN electrodes, fabricated on oxidized silicon substrates and coated with multi-wall carbon nanotubes, as a multielectrode array for the treatment of retinal degeneration. Vision loss due to retinal degradation is common, but since the output retinal ganglion cells remain intact, it has been suggested that a retinal [...]

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CPHPC depletes serum form of amyloid P component in circulating cerebrospinal fluid

The serum form of amyloid P component (SAP) is believed to bind to neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid deposits in the cerebrovascular fluid. Since beta amyloids are the main constituents of plaque in Alzheimer’s patients and SAP stabilizes them and promotes their persistence, inhibiting SAP may be an indirect method to prevention or restoration in Alzheimer’s [...]

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Correlation between path length of resting state brain and IQ

The small world networks theory suggests that all of our neural networks can be categorized into two classes. First, there are neighborhood clusters of neurons with high levels of intraconnectivity that are capable of efficient local information processing. Then, there are several long-distance connections between these neighborhoods which provide for global communication and cross-modular integration.
Researchers [...]

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Variability to apoptotic response mediated by functional protein levels

When aptosis is induced in cell populations with tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), there is a surprising amount of variation in both how long it takes for cells to die and whether or not they will ever do so. For example, when exposed to 50 nanograms of TRAIL and cycloheximide, some mammary gland cells [...]

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Prospects for remyelination following multiple sclerosis

The main cause of multiple sclerosis is that components of the body’s own immune system (chiefly T cells foreign to the CNS) attack and damage the myelin of neurons. Although axon loss is a later symptom of the disease, it is secondary to the demyelination process. This suggests that in order to find a cure, [...]

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Describing the genetic development of cortical GABAergic interneurons

In this fascinating piece of work, Okaty et al recently set out to describe the various upregulations and downregulations of genes in genetically labeled, fast-spiking, parvalbumin-expressing, rodent GABAergic interneurons during the first 6 postnatal weeks. Because they restricted their genetic analysis to one subset of cells, their results are more specific than if they had [...]

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